Let's Try to Salvage the Rest of the Year
I've been forgetting who I am. I stayed up late the other night reading my old journal entries and these are the entries that I gladly let people see. I've been tempted many times this year to retreat and write about all my hurts and pains that I completely forgot what it's like to cup your emotions and to sand it down until all that's left are the truth and joy.
If I didn't have my old entries, I would have allowed myself to forget everything that happened to me in the last three years. I love to brag about how sharp my memory is but it's incredible how all my insights about my life, people, and spirituality fade away all too easy when I don't tend to them. 2011 was my huge transition year and it was really easy to get motivated to document all the changes that were happening to me. I felt like I was running all over the place trying to tie balloons down before they all floated away.
2012 was the year I was settling into the changes and everything felt so new. Now that 2013 is ending, I have the hardest time putting a finger to what this year is all about. When I don't reflect, I'm lost. I'm lost.
I've developed an embarrassment for the word "busy." It's the word I use when I turn down opportunities to hang out with friends. I use it to justify staying home all the time and not going on vacation. I've also learned to hate the word "money." That word evolved into my favorite excuse to avoid participating in life. Maybe I should say devolve, because it also became what I was chasing on a daily basis when I'd be in front of my desk working.
I use to tell myself that I love my work first, and the relief derived from my compensation comes second. It's hilarious that it kinda switched around because I quit my day job in February to pursue my own design practice and to break away from the conventions of making a living. My last day of work was January 31 and I organized an barbecue to celebrate my independence and my 27th birthday. I was building up everything in my life to that moment. Before marriage blindsided me (in an awesome, magical way), my biggest dream was to be self-employed. That barbecue has been my favorite birthday party ever.
I took it as a good omen for everything that was to come. I set off on my own because I wanted to have control freedom over my time. I was tired of the daily commute. I wanted to push my talents and be able to choose my projects. I wanted to prepare myself for a life at home where I can be present for the children to come in our lives.
Before I quit, I didn't even have things bad. Everything was as good as it got in Whitewall. I didn't have to wake up early (call time was 10:30), there rarely was overtime, and the company was careful with the projects they accepted. I had two officemates who are like brothers to me. I idolize my former boss and even made her a godmother at my wedding because her family/design balance still remains to be the life I want to emulate. I learned most of everything I know in running a design business through her. She also does the family thing incredibly well and it was not unusual to see her kids in the office and her rounding them up for school or a doctor's checkup. She takes time off for a month abroad every year but we never felt abandoned and in fact it was in those times that we learned how to step things up by doing our presentations on our own.
There came a point though that I learned all that I possibly could already. I also knew that no other company would come close to the work environment that I came to love in Whitewall. The decision to quit was easy but it meant giving up 1/3 of our income. This income was steady and reliable and it was terrifying to let it go. It was so scary but I know I did the right thing and I have no doubt that I'm much closer to where I want to be. I chose to be brave because Joel was our constant. He may have tied himself to an exhausting job but because of it, we were able to live comfortably.
When I quit, things stayed relatively the same and we were able to pay all our bills still. What we lost though was the freedom to eat out, party hard, and treat ourselves whenever we wanted --oh, and SAVINGS. Wow, savings, what's that? It was all good because we learned to be content with little treats every now and then, instead of the big ones. Our friends understood that and it was during this time that we created "Makati Business Club" where we'd invite them over to our apartment to have drinks once a week after long work days.
Then came September when Joel finally quit his day job and had my blessing to take on a part time job in a less stressful environment. He's now an English teacher/trainer/assessor for a wonderful international franchise. When it came to his turn to chase his freedom, I was ready to stand by him. It took him two months to bring in his first paycheck, where the first month wasn't compensated because it was a training month. His paycheck was 50% less than what he used to pull in. It won't be like that forever but the route to steady part-timing is an uphill climb. It's really a miracle that our design business took care of the slack during those months.
Unfortunately for us, miracles also run out, and that's when we feel all the anxieties of not having a steady stream of income. We have more fights and we're more stressed out than usual because we hardly know when money is going to come and we have a bunch of expenses that stay fixed (rent, utilities, car amortization, insurance/investment plans, etc.). Here's one freelance booboo I totally forgot about and bit me straight in the butt when it came: DOMAIN/TYPEKIT RENEWAL! It's a yearly payment thing so it's too easy to forget when that time of the year is if you're not careful. Oh! And I'm not paying taxes yet! I will though starting in 2014, and I'm bracing myself.
Man... we quit our jobs precisely because we didn't want money and busyness to be the center of our lives. We had a huge fight last Friday and I realized we've been wanting to vent about all our frustrations but keeping things together was our primary concern. We talked about our values and decided to stop working last weekend (yes, it had reached a point that we were working weekends) and do relief work to take us out of our bubble and to be of service to people who need it the most. We spent Saturday circling the Makati/Pasay/Taguig area looking for relief centers to volunteer with (it was a weekend and the rest of Metro Manila had the same idea as we did) but all the centers were overflowing with help. We found ourselves in the Bayani Road area and stopped by the road to eat isaw and barbecue. We also drove around Libingan ng mga Bayani to look for my grandfather but ended up visiting all the National Artists and freedom fighters. It just seemed like a good idea to wander off.
Come Sunday, we made an appearance at church (we haven't gone in a long time) and attempted to do Oplan Hatid at Villamor for a second time (the first time was on Saturday). We succeeded in bringing a teenage girl home to her family later that night. Anyone who's done Oplan Hatid knows that securing a passenger and the journey home is a long, tiring, process that will need all your patience and love.
In any other weekend, we'd choose sleep and bumming over doing anything. This is why we've been missing church and a bunch of other activities normal 20-somethings do on Saturday nights. We've been so greedy with our energy that it was strange for us to realize we never ever felt recharged even if we'd sleep in and rest the whole day.
When we burst out of our fox hole and got ourselves moving and doing things outside of ourselves, we arrived home late on Sunday brimming with energy. We're still broke, we're still working hard, and we're still scavenging for things to eat in our refrigerator -- but we're learning the hard way that energy must be expelled in order to be gained. People who exercise after work or early in the morning are already familiar with this. We stopped working out so we forgot that the worst thing you can do in the face of inertia is to buckle and dissolve into the floor.
Maybe things come in three's and 2013 is the "ok, time's up, face reality!" year. I'm going to try to gain my footing back again. I'm not going to forget anymore.